Analysts skeptical over new try at Mideast peace talks

Jul. 19, 2013
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John Kerry / Mandel Ngan, AP

by Oren Dorell and David Jackson, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell and David Jackson, USA TODAY

Secretary of State John Kerry sad Friday that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have established "the basis" for resuming peace talks, though analysts say the prospects for success are doubtful.

"This is a significant and welcome step forward," Kerry said in Jordan after holding previously unscheduled talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Kerry said Israeli and Palestinians will meet in Washington as early as next week to try and finalize details of new talks. If things go as expected, Kerry said, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators will resume negotiations "within the next week or so."

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- who spoke by phone with President Obama on Thursday -- has said he is willing to resume talks, but with no pre-conditions. /Kerry said the talks will be secretive.

"The best way to give these negotiations a chance is to keep them private," he said.

"We know that the challenges require some very tough choices in the days ahead," Kerry said. "Today, however, I am hopeful."

The talks would be the first direct negotiations since 2010, when talks broke down over Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel insists that it will retain large communities in the West Bank while giving up smaller ones to a Palestinian state, and maintains that it will not divide its capital of Jerusalem. Palestinian negotiators have said East Jerusalem should be made part of a new state Palestinian and that Israel should abandon all communities in the West Bank no matter how large.

Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator for the State Department, said Kerry's carefully worded description of the agreement to talk ‚?? "a significant and welcome step forward" -- is telling of the fact that "this is going to be an excruciating and painful process."

That the talks are going to happen in Washington, that Kerry announced himself as the sole spokesman for the process, and that Kerry could not announce the basis on which the talks will resume "tells me he is the glue that holds this together and it will be an extremely difficult process," Miller said.

Kerry, who spent the majority of his tenure as Secretary of State so far pushing to restart negotiations, "owns" the talks in a way that neither Abbas, Netanyahu or President Obama do, Miller said.

"Whether these succeed or fail depends on whether or not Abbas and Netanyahu see their mutual advantage in the process," Miller said. "They're going to have to support one another and help each other politically if this is going to work."

The moment of truth is yet to come, because the basis for resuming talks has to be declared, he said.

"If it turns out there's too much ambiguity and uncertainty‚?¶ about parameters, this will prove a key to an empty room," Miller said.

Michael Rubin, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, cautioned against having too much optimism about the talks. Rubin said he doubts the meeting will even happen.

"I could be wrong," he said. "I suggest people were telling Kerry what they wanted him to hear to get him to stop bothering them and will change their position once he leaves the region."

The issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians are well known and longstanding, says Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Whatever takes place is still going to be a difficult negotiation," Cordesman said. "The question now is whether they're going to move forward."

For negotiations to succeed, Israel has to make compromises on settlements, territory and security, while the Palestinians must give up some of their aspirations on the right of return to Israel for refugees and their descendants scattered across the world since Arab wars against Israel, Cordesman said.

But there's also an economic dimension, Cordesman said.

"The success of the Palestinian state is dependent upon a successful Palestinian economy," he said.

Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center in Washington, said more talks will not solve the issue as far as Palestinians are concerned.

"After months of tireless effort, John Kerry has accomplished the tremendous task of getting the parties precisely back to the point they were at over five years ago when talks failed," he said. "These talks will only act as a cover for continued Israeli colonialism of Palestinian territory."

Natan Sachs of Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution is also skeptical the talks will succeed.

The two sides are far apart and leaders of both are entering the talks "playing the blame game," Sachs said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas doesn't want to be blamed for not agreeing to take part, like he was three years ago when he failed to negotiate while Israel suspended construction in settlement on the West Bank and East Jerusalem and later, when construction resumed, Sachs said.

And Palestinians fear that Israel "is negotiating for the sake of negotiating," because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a much different concept of a final settlement than either the Palestinians or Americans have in mind, Sachs said.

If the talks do fail, "there is a very real danger of the eruption of violence," like when talks failed in 2001 leading to a proliferation of suicide bombings and reprisals by Israeli authorities, an era known as the second Palestinian Intifadah, Sachs said.

And there is a danger, if they fail, that Kerry's characterization of this moment as the last chance for peace will be taken seriously by people in the region, he said.